Sunday, May 29, 2016

In context of the ongoing show On Animals. Cognition. Senses. Play the artists Rachel Mayeri and Maja Smrekar gave a public presentation into their artistic research.

Maja
Smrekar's performance I Hunt Nature and Culture Hunts Me,
created during a research residency, investigates the phylogenetics
of the wolf, the wolf-dog-human relationship and animal ethics. In
her work Ecce Canis she explores the metabolic pathway
processes that trigger emotional motifs which bind humans and
dogs and let them successfully coexist together. The installation
contains serotonin from both the artist and her Scottish border
collie Byron, which has been transformed by chemical protocols
into an odour - the chemical essence of their human-canine relationship.The
films of Rachel Mayeri are the result of years of collaboration
with primatologists. In her series Primate Cinema, Mayeri
has made films for (and about) chimpanzees and other primates.
In Apes as Family we watch a drama based on a tale of both
chimpanzee social customs and domestication. While, as humans,
we find the plot emotionally compelling, we also become caught
up with watching the reactions of a chimpanzee audience watching
the same film on a large TV.

Saturday, May 28, 2016

The exhibition On Animals. Cognition, Senses,
Play investigates two groups of animals that are closest to us.
Primates, our nearest 'relatives', have a complex cognitive proximity to
humans, but also differ radically in certain areas. While dogs, with
whom we have made a symbiotic contract., have evolved alongside us over
the last 30,000 years. The works in this exhibition share Donna
Haraway's concept of "cooperative actions": overcoming conventional
dichotomies of nature/culture, human/animal or subject/object is all
about joint action. The artists, Maja Smrekar and Rachel Mayeri, make
use of certain narrative strategies and the phenomenon of immersion, to
approach the perspective of a nonhuman counterpart. The works of both
artists place the instinct and the senses of the nonhuman at the centre
of artistic research, while aiming to translate the nonhuman cognitive
ability by means of the performance, film and art/science collaboration.

The
exhibition On Animals. Cognition, Senses, Play
investigates two groups of animals that are closest to us. Primates,
our nearest 'relatives', have a complex cognitive proximity to
humans, but also differ radically in certain areas. While dogs,
with whom we have made a symbiotic contract., have evolved alongside
us over the last 30,000 years. The works in this exhibition share
Donna Haraway's concept of "cooperative actions": overcoming
conventional dichotomies of nature/culture, human/animal or subject/object
is all about joint action. The artists, Maja Smrekar and
Rachel Mayeri, make use of certain narrative strategies
and the phenomenon of immersion, to approach the perspective of
a nonhuman counterpart. The works of both artists place the instinct
and the senses of the nonhuman at the centre of artistic research,
while aiming to translate the nonhuman cognitive ability by means
of the performance, film and art/science collaboration.

Maja
Smrekar's performance I Hunt Nature and Culture Hunts Me,
created during a research residency, investigates the phylogenetics
of the wolf, the wolf-dog-human relationship and animal ethics.
The implied risk and intimacy of Smrekar's performance with hybrid
wolfdogs is contrasted by the reading of cultural texts from Joseph
Beuys, Oleg Kulik and Smrekar. A documentary film also explores
the complex evolutionary story of the canine.In
her work Ecce Canis she explores the metabolic pathway
processes that trigger emotional motifs which bind humans and
dogs and let them successfully coexist together. The installation
contains serotonin from both the artist and her Scottish border
collie Byron, which has been transformed by chemical protocols
into an odour - the chemical essence of their human-canine relationship.

The
films of Rachel Mayeri are the result of years of collaboration
with primatologists. In her series Primate Cinema, Mayeri
has made films for (and about) chimpanzees and other primates.
In Apes as Family we watch a drama based on a tale of both
chimpanzee social customs and domestication. While, as humans,
we find the plot emotionally compelling, we also become caught
up with watching the reactions of a chimpanzee audience watching
the same film on a large TV. Indeed the film is both an example
of 'Primate Cinema', that is a film made for nonhuman primates,
and the complexities of cross-species understanding. Mayeri's
film Baboons as Friends juxtaposes footage of baboons with
a film noir reenactment by human actors, who translate a tale
of lust, jealousy and deceit from the animal to the human. Regine
Rapp & Christian de Lutz (curators)

"In the Age of the Anthropocene, this talk will explore how humans
impact on our world both by their presence and indirectly by their lifestyle.
This is a science-art investigation of tourism and its effects on closed
eco systems, specifically the Galapagos and Lord Howe Islands (both World
Heritage Listed). Through my art investigations I work to bring awareness
to the public in order to create a more relevant understanding of the
issues surrounding human impact on the environment and its long term effects.

Through
the interaction between the worlds of art and science I explore evolution
in the Anthropocene, a harbinger for the future of our human interaction
on this earth. Increasing tourism instigated by economic change and the
media’s current focus on the apparently pristine, remote and untouched
landscapes, creates expectations of the natural environment. With the
Islands of Galapagos and Lord Howe acting as microcosms for our biosphere,
this dialogue will explore the uncertainties that surround population
growth, extinction and the dissemination of toxic materials into the environment.

My research and resulting artworks explore, through photography, video,
microscopy, sound and installation, connections on how utopia becomes
a dystopia, we trapped in our desires for a unique experience; how modernisation
and the need for the tourist dollar become can become weapons for a bleak
future for the Galapagos and Lord Howe Islands."
-Lea Kannar-Lichtenberger

Sunday, May 01, 2016

At the closing of the exhibition Nonhuman Subjectivities:The Other Selves. On the Phenomenon of the Microbiome Felix Navarrete (MA Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, London) gave a talk on the nonhuman, bioart and an "immunological ethics" in reference to the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza:

"Bioart makes salient the problematization of the relation between readily recognizable "human" elements and the non-human constitutive operations that traverse them. Included in this exploration lies the crucial, open question of if and how we can construct an ethics commensurable to the reformulations of agency, identity, collectivity, and even of freedom, that such works of art force via their inhuman vantage points. We turn to the 17th century philosopher Baruch Spinoza's thoroughly materialist and naturalist conceptual framework as a resource to sketch out an immunological ethics that can more adequately think through the ethical subjectivity of 3rd person reflexive pronouns." (Felix Navarrete)

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About Me

Art Laboratory Berlin e.V., a non-profit organisation, was founded in Autumn 2006. As a noncommercial art space, Art Laboratory Berlin was established as a platform for projects
concentrating on the border between visual arts and related artistic and scholarly fields.
For more info. go to
http://www.artlaboratory-berlin.org